Neglecting Swine Flu

RantWoman apologizes to anyone who has been lamenting lack of up-to-the-second reflections about the swine flu crisis. Herewith an effort to remedy the oversight.

RantWoman has been to a couple buffets and community meals recently where there was a bottle of hand sanitizer right at the head of the buffet line. RantWoman found herself grumbling that one of the meals featured mainly finger food in spite of the swine flu issue! At least there was hand sanitizer.

Not long ago RantWoman had a conversation with a nurse in pediatrics. She said the ICU where she works is full of swine flu cases.

RantWoman has a neighbor who said that his health care provider just assumes anyone who has flu symptoms these days has swine flu. This neighbor was nice enough not to try to get too close, but that did not really do anything about all the other likely flu cases RantWoman hangs with.

A couple weeks ago, RantMom wanted to celebrate her birthday a week or so ahead of some scheduled badly-needed surgery. RantWoman was not feeling horribly sick but was feeling sneezy. Alas, when she called RantMom to talk about her concerns, we both came to the conclusions that 1. We both live in buildings full of people at high risk. 2. We ride around all over the place on the bus full of people with all kinds of health issues. 3. If we were going to get sick, it might already have happened and 4. We would rather take our chances and have good family time together no matter what the flu issues. RantWoman has found herself thinking the same thing a time or two in connection with other activities that are important to her.

Good thing the event at RantMom's was weeks ago; now she is in great shape recovering from surgery. Alas, Little Sister and Brother-in-law both seem to be sick. Little Sister is cross because she is definitely at high risk due to health issues. She asked her provider repeatedly for an H1N1 shot--to no avail and now RantWoman is monitoring by phone, exhorting sister to try to keep drinking in spite of sore throat, checking about breathing issues and having the kind of morbid conversations that sometimes come up in such situations. RantWoman will also poke around for some info in Spanish so brother-in-law has more ways to manage the situation on his own if sister is too out of commission.

Little Sister once had dengue, also known as Bonebreak disease, while visiting Brother-in-Law's homeland; she says the headaches she is having are as bad a dengue. RantWoman is trying to manage time commitments but she reassured Little Sister about one point: RantWoman has had some encounters with people who have studied the 1918 flu epidemic. In some cities people starved to death because no one would take their friends and relatives food; in another city people wore masks. Even though the masks were not necessarily effective on technical grounds, no one starved to death. So if Little Sister needs errands run.....